wander past the computer into the kitchen and only then does it hit me, [never you mind what it was that hit me]. stand at the window eyeing the heavy sky realizing i can breathe as well as almost anyone for once without serious expensive prescription medical intervention and really there’s no reason. decide it will not last but will appreciate the respite while it does.
& so. since i have all the inspiration of an … uninspired thing, and the highest google ranking since the last time i had a high google ranking, i’ve decided to do what my friends in medicine & academia advised me to do about this discovery, that is, put some keywords in the page title & blog it.
prior to the day quoted above, which was several days after i’d begun taking prescription strength aleve for a toothache, i was debilitated by my asthma. would wake up gasping for breath & needed many blasts off the inhaler just to get getting air, & i would need the inhaler more or less constantly all day & still barely be able to negotiate a ‘normal’ life. the only thing that had helped was serevent, but loss of medical insurance made that $140/month inhaler out of budget, & i went back to being sick as hell all the time.
so the toothache faded & i stopped taking the naproxen & the breathing got worse. being analytical by nature i looked back & realized the only thing i’d done different those breathing days was to take naproxen.
i started taking the naproxen again. one in the morning one at night 1,000mg per day. i started being able to breathe again.
i ran out of prescription strength & started taking over the counter generic aleve, and i googled to see if this was known anywhere, all i found was warnings about naproxen being bad for asthmatics with sensitivity to aspirin & other … n-saids? but i have no such sensitivities.
now let me tell you the weirdest part. even on expensive serevent, i was still subject to my worst symptom trigger — that is, getting somewhere & finding i was without my inhaler. instant acute attack, severe symptoms, panic. on aleve, i go days not even knowing where my inhaler is. discovering i’ve forgotten it happens more often than discovering i’ve remembered it, & it just doesn’t matter anymore. i mean, i have as close to zero symptoms as i have ever had in my entire life right now, however it should be noted i also have (sort of inadvertently it just happened) cut down smoking to approx. 1 pack a week, before the cutting down i did still have the occasional symptom. occasional.
disclaimer: i may be a medical freak. this isn’t a scientific study. i do know for sure it’s the aleve i’ve experimented again & again. one doctor said it makes sense there is a smooth muscle relaxant in naproxen sodium, that’s the most medically scientific i can get for you. try at own risk i’m not a doctor i’m a web designer.
i currently take 440mg morning, and 440mg before bed, that’s double the recommended overthecounter dosage. i take it with food in my stomach & with a full glass of water & have no gastric side effects however i have one of those castiron type stomachs, ymmv.
today? i have no idea where i left my inhaler. and i don’t use prescription inhalers anymore, a basic primatene will do & it lasts forever, months & months. i live like a person with mild almost nonexistent asthma. this is utterly fucking miraculous in case i haven’t mentioned that.
Wow, you will have to re badge it and sell it under the lizutame brand, or maybe, inhaleliz….You saw it here first folks. The making of a millionairess, the anti asthma queen lizzy.
Blessed be. BFG
yeah, but i just gave it away free. being able to breathe shouldn’t cost huge sums of money (like $140/month for instance).
Well first there’s oprah, then Dr phil, then the tonight show, and then the ‘divorced and looking” show, and then survivor LA zoo, award ceremony at cornell U for the discovery of the century, and finally “You’re breathing with Liz” (a fun show where previous asthmatics take turns running over old inhalers with an ex policecar from the blues brothers.)
Lizercise, exercise video and DVD for the previously house bound.
BFG
or of course the lawsuits from people who can’t read disclaimers & don’t know an n-said from navel lint, which they collect, along with huge settlements for doing stupid shit. and then there are the people claiming their teenagers started worshipping satan after i turned them into nonprescription drug addicts, and then oprah would interview me in whatever jail i end up in for prescribing nonprescription drugs without a license.
Sure, but hey you would be famous, or should i say more famous than now cause you are famous on the net, just ask google. hell they make movies about anything these days, the lizards rise and fall, the sorry tail of a reptile who breathed free, only to be jail for showing others how. or. dr liz a bouyant story of freedom and new tyres, set in holywood texas, the part of liz played by pamela anderson and a red wig. the wig gets actaim and a new range of dodge colours are issued in 2005, the dodge reptuna has to be recalled due to a disturbing tendancy to eat uniroyal tyres… dodge spokewoman julianna chrome said its all down to that evil woman liz, every one wanted to have tyres as an experimant in physics. liz was unavaliable for comment as the cuban terrorist incarsoration facility is off limits to the press.the organisation doctors with out fronteirs have taken on the fight to free liz, and to show support all wear red/orange hair. government spokesman wade pillpopper was heard saying it will be a dark day in hell before we release the terroist who filled our schools with bright children who wanted to learn. pharmac relabels antiasthma medication in red and orange boxes, sales soar.
pope declares liz a saint, due to the miracle of breath.
there you go some thoughts that popped in to my head.
i’m always looking for material for stories…
blessed be BFG
utterly fucking cool, too. i’ll tell my friend betty who is out of insurance as well and the meds kill her.
I am convinced that all kinds of prescriptions are unnecessary – doled out because the docs get huge kickbacks and the drug companies want to keep making billions.
D was on about 8 different meds. OK – she is relatively health and 33, OK? Isn’t that insane? Her doc had her on glucophage, blood pressure medicine, cholesterol medicine, Paxil, that stomach “acid reflex” stuff, Xanax, Ambien, a liver pill to protect her liver from being damaged FROM ALL THE OTHER SHIT, and I think something else.
A couple of months ago – she quit taking ALL of them (except her birth control) and she feels MUCH better. She is borderline Type II diabetic – but moderate exercise controls that, as well as any concerns about the blood pressure and cholesterol and all that. There was no reason for her to be on anti-depressants or sleeping pills. All it would have took was her doc listening to her and suggesting a few simple lifestyle changes. God, we were spending like $250 a month on all that WITH insurance. So I’m sure the drug companies were probably making a couple grand per month off her.
Now we don’t take hardly any prescription meds ever (she has birth control, like I said – but that is just hormones.) Once in a while one of us may take a Xanax, muscle relaxer, or Vicodin (I have a chronic degenerative joint discorder – but only resort to the Vic maybe one pill every 6 weeks.)
You know what the secret to clear skin is? Epsom Salt baths and Witch Hazel. I swear . . .two dirt cheap things found in any drugstore will out do tens of thousands of dollars in dermatology.
Are you still using aleve for asthma?
wow, i didn’t see this, it got lost in the spam. funny you should ask, yes, i have been. i have good insurance and can get the Advair, but i hadn’t bothered to go get any because i was going through another round of bad teeth (i do not have good dental, so … this happens from time to time), and was amazed at how much difference it made.
apparently it can cause gastric upset if used regularly, but i’ve never had a problem with it.
Does Asprin bother your asthma??
i thought i was crazy… last year at age 47 i was gasping for breath in the cold winter air ( asthma) i was started taking aleve after this episode for headaches and it alleviated my cold air attacks… yes aleve , for some miracle, works..
@Rae, no, aspirin does not bother my asthma, all nSaids work fine for me. Aleve, however, with its anti-inflammatory side effects, actually makes a big difference in my asthma.
@athena — glad to hear I’m not the only one. It’s a huge difference, I remember it just being the weirdest thing, waking up not gasping for breath.
Have you had any heart problems or any bad side effects bleeding disorders etc. while on Aleve? I’m interested intrying it, I’m just wondering if the “medical” sites aren’t try to scare people away from it.
I have not, but I know that’s one of the dangers (having a sudden G.I. bleed). I usually take it with food, and I often forget to take it so it’s not every day. It really does still help, even 8 years later. I don’t know what the incidence of serious side effects is, but I do rather expect that pharmaceutical companies who have super-expensive patent medicines like Advair ($300+ for a one month inhaler) would try to keep doctors convinced that the expensive stuff is the only way to go.
Naproxen is an anti-inflammatory, so that’s why it eases some asthma symptoms I think.